modified: Yamaha YS100 FM Synthesizer Vintage Polyphonic Digital Multitimbral Synthesizer, Vintage

put your sunglasses on, and fasten your seat belt, the ultra futuristic keyboard can take you to some very unexpected places of retro 80s fm digital doom.

• bits about the keyboard itself:

it’s an extraordinary full scale fm synthesizer, actually. it uses the same engine as TX81Z.

cons: you have very limited options of editing the sounds, and you can’t really create your own sounds from scratch.

pros: the sound editing options are really fast to use, and you can upload any presets from TX81Z (and from DX11, as far as I know they’re the same), and you can use and edit them. it’s 8 part multitimbral, and it has built in fx, that are quite cool, I would say so.

• now some words about this exact lot:

it has been modified. you can see the knob installed on the machine. this knob is a digital processing frequency of the whole machine. when the knob is fully opened - everything is the same as on the original. when you turn it down - the digital engine of the whole machine slows down, and it results in lower pitch, but also lower sampling frequency, and everything becomes really lo-fi.

of course, as mentioned, this synthesizer has built in fx, so twisting the knob also results in longer reverb/delay times.

the response of the knob changes is a bit slowed down, so it’s very easy and actually perfectly achievable to create tape-like effects with it.

but just to make sure: you can’t go really low with that knob. in it’s lowest position the result is still very musical, sounds keep their nature, just everything slows down, and becomes more lo-fi. it is very audible, but I’m just making it sure, because some machines with similar modifications allow users to just go into the lowest darkness of bit crushing effects and noises, but you can’t do it here.

any machine has it‘s own limitations regarding how dramatically far such a modification can go. and here it’s been deliberately and carefully set to maximum range that would still allow and guarantee proper working with no errors. I’ve spent many hours with it, and I can confirm it.

another good thing - fresh internal battery for internal memory has been installed, and a battery holder as well. so for many next years this territory is covered, and there’s no need to worry about it.

now few downsides: as shown, there’s this black blemish in one corner on the display.

it’s purely cosmetical, and doesn’t affects anything. the display is perfectly working and is perfectly readable and responsive.

also few buttons would require more firm push, and the very very first key on the keyboard for some reason always has maximum velocity.

these are very minor downsides, otherwise everything is good, works well. as mentioned, has the modification installed, that makes it way more interesting, and new battery, that makes it more reliable.

UK plug, UK/EU voltage unit.

sold with no returns at all